Fit fifty-year-olds are fond of saying that they are in the same shape now as they were when they were 18. Ironically, many of today’s 18-year-olds are in the same shape as a sedentary fifty-year old. In New York City, for example, a recent study found that more than half of the public high school students already showed risk factors for heart disease—primarily from lack of exercise and excess weight. Fifty percent of the girls and 20% of the boys were medically obese. National statistics are only slightly better.

What happened to the fit, athletic healthfulness that we still carry as an anachronistic image of youth? Lots of finger pointing can be done, from lack of knowledge and examples about good diets, to the fact that today’s youth spend afternoons exploring the hidden corners of the web rather than of parks and forests. One accusing finger, at least in New York, has been to point at the near clear-cutting of physical education and athletic programs in public schools.

The Problem

For three decades now, starting in the dark 1970’s, funding for New York public school athletics and physical education programs has been minimal at best—with even this trickle often shunted away to meet academic shortfalls. The predictable result is that, today, the majority of programs remaining in the city are essentially "pay for play"—where parents and community groups raise the funds for facilities, equipment and even coaches. Children in communities without such resources go without.

Ironically, the same decades saw growing awareness among adults of the link between sports participation and physical and mental health. One of the beneficiaries of the fitness boom was the New York Road Runners Club, which grew from a small group of eccentric men in the early ’70s to a 35,000 member non-profit organization with a full-time staff of 65 by the late ’90s. Founder Fred Lebow always felt that the club, in addition to conducting races, should be a force for good in its environment. Indeed, the club’s mission statement cites one of its goals as "being a good neighbor and a sponsor and supporter of appropriate public works and charitable and humanitarian programs."

To carry out this aspect of their mission, in October 1997 the club formed the NYRR Foundation as an outreach branch to focus on the goal of promoting running and fitness among people of all ages. The problem was, they weren’t sure exactly how they should do this. For a year, NYRRC Board Chairman Bernie Cooper, Achilles Track Club founder Dick Traum, marathon great Grete Waitz—who agreed to chair the Foundation—and newly hired Program Director Jennifer Stockbridge bounced around ideas, ranging from substance abuse prevention to senior fitness.

The Plan

The Foundation had begun to turn its focus toward youth, and gained the active involvement of recently retired advertising executive and long-time runner Norman Goluskin, when a series of New York Times’ articles in January of 1999 detailed the sorry state of city athletics and physical fitness among school children. This was unbelievable for Stockbridge, who recalls, "Sports had carved my daily life in school."

About the same time, they received a call from a teacher in a middle school in Red Hook, Brooklyn looking for help. After visiting the school—sited in an economically depressed neighborhood that could never support extra-curricular school activities, but which boasted a "gorgeous" city park’s recreation facility—Goluskin and Stockbridge started the first Running Partners program. They weren’t "seeking to discover the next great American runner" according to Goluskin, or "start an elite program" says Waitz. Their aim was both simpler and loftier—to give the children what running had given them.

"We love running," Stockbridge explains, "but more, what running has done for us in terms of structure and self-esteem." "My experience," says Goluskin, "is that the lessons of running are the lessons of life: perseverance, teamwork, that it is going to hurt to get results." Adds Waitz, "Running does more than physical fitness: it provides goals, discipline—values that they need in life."

With this goal in mind, they structured a program that would open its arms to any student who wanted to run. Jim Milne, a long-time Goluskin friend and track coach, put together an age-appropriate 12 week training plan that leads to a "goal day," and also got the students into a private school track league where they rub sweaty shoulders with prep students, and vice-versa. They made team t-shirts, and designed award certificates.

But most of all, they built relationships. "It was a great learning experience," Goluskin says, "We were the strangers, we were on trial. A lot of people had wandered into their lives and they needed to know that we would stick around." They did, and after a month were getting "high-fives" from the kids who were waiting for them to show up for practice twice a week. Near the end of the semester, they brought nearly 30 kids to Central Park to run a NYRRC road race with volunteer partners from the club.

The Program

Today, what began that first spring has expanded to approximately 200 children in 11 elementary and middle schools city-wide, chosen based on their need, teacher and principal buy-in, and geography, given limited personnel and travel time. Stockbridge designed a comprehensive teacher’s packet, including the training plan and motivational tools like a student contract to help to keep young runners focused on their goals through the hard work of building fitness. Teams continue to run in the private school meets, and also compete in a series of NYRRC road races, acquiring points toward an interschool championship.

A $1000 grant from the National Council on Women’s Health paid for iron-on distance patches, from one to five miles, which are awarded when the kids reach each milestone without stopping. Teachers have also helped innovate, like Laura Clark of Manhattan’s west side Dual Language Middle School, who introduced a simple training log that many teachers now use, and also awards "Marathon of Miles" certificates for students whose training adds up to 26.2 miles.

In January 2000 Stockbridge and her new assistant Chrissy Odalen started a newsletter and a website (www.nyrrc.org/divisions/foundation), both of which celebrate achievements and affirm the runners with photos and results, as well as providing training tips, motivational quotes, and student essays. Reflecting her commitment to be "more than a name on the stationary," Grete Waitz, who was once a school teacher herself, handwrites a letter for each newsletter, and invites students to correspond with her. She regularly receives letters, to which she replies with a postcard from wherever she is at the time: Oslo, Gainsville, Los Angeles...

Waitz also runs with the students when she’s in the city, either at a practice, or in one of the events, like the Fifth Avenue Mile or a Central Park 5K. "It gives me so much pleasure," says Waitz, "to see the smiles on their faces." Other famous visitors and running partners include Tegla Loroupe, German Silva, John Kagwe, Khalid Khannouchi, and Josh Cox.

The People

At P.S. 60 in the South Bronx, health teacher Courtney Barden and Mardeah Gbotoe, a volunteer college student, lead six students to a well-maintained city park. The old neighborhood of low-rise apartments and townhouses they run through appears to be on the upswing—only the groups of adult men sitting outside corner stores and on the park benches belie its poor economic health. The men stare at the group led by the two women, who ignore the minor heckling as they pass by. In the early days of the program, Barden tells me, they had more than minor heckling, once even having to chase down a couple of men walking off with jackets left on a bench while the children ran. She arranged for a squad car to make a presence for several weeks during practice.

Barden is typical of the teachers who run the programs: a runner and NYRRC member herself, she read about the Foundation’s programs in the club newsletter about the same time as she had a meeting with her principal about modifying her position to include some physical education. The principal was supportive, and Barden began holding practices three times per week, incorporating academic elements such as math for adding miles and calculating splits, English in the form of writing a running journal and essays, and biology as they learn about muscles, bones and joints.

At the park, the kids run a mile—three laps around the ball field. Stephanie, one of the older girls, leads the way. Stephanie glides along as comfortably as a Villanova track star, easily maintaining a conversation until the final sprint. "When I started I couldn’t do one lap," she says. "My goal is to run five miles. So far, I’ve run two miles without stopping, but it would have been three if I had woken up for the race last weekend." Stephanie’s running journal reflects her new love for the sport. Some entries sound like any runner’s feelings: "Running clears my mind and releases my body," and "I have a lot of energy and really want to run today." Others tell of the frustrations of a middle school girl: "My Mom is running with me if she shows up—I can’t wait!!!" and later, "My Mom didn’t come. Oh well. I am very tired."

In the course of the mile, the two girls lap the four guys, who walk a couple times before finishing. The bigger boys show off their strength later, during the hundred meter sprints that Barden has them run. Walter, the smallest boy, brings up the rear every time, but, like many adults who lack "talent," he is an enthusiastic runner. "He comes to every practice and he never complains," Barden brags. "I’d take ten of him."

Eduardo, a student at Dual Language Middle School, is another boy who wouldn’t likely be on the track team. "I didn’t want to join [Running Partners]," Eduardo tells me, "because I’m not good at running. But I was bored after school. There’s nothing to do. Not even good TV. So I started running, and I really, really liked it." Eduardo started with walking three minutes/running one, for a mile, and now has run four miles without stopping and completed two marathons-of-miles. "It lets you do something new, and teaches you things you didn’t know," Eduardo sums up.

Pitfalls and Potential

While the Foundation has grown, the first school at Red Hook no longer has a program. Its demise was instructive. When they expanded to new schools in the second year, Stockbridge had less time to visit. The teacher who started the program moved on, and, while a new teacher took over the program, it lacked the initial spark, and soon fell apart. "We learned that these programs are not like the NYRRC, with motivated adults," Stockbridge recalls. "Running is not an instant gratification sport. There has to be hands-on involvement and committed teachers and volunteers to maintain motivation." Goluskin adds, "We realized that in order to grow, we needed to increase staff—that quality is everything, and we must continue to oversee the programs."

Barden explains some of the challenges: "Everything is reading, reading, reading," she complains—so much so that the schools exclude any other developmental activity. She understands the pressure, however: P.S. 60 is currently a "SURR School"—School Under Registration Review, meaning that they have to improve scores on standardized tests, or pass into the bureaucratic nightmare of the Chancellor’s direct supervision. One affect is that the program has lost all the fourth graders this month, who are required to stay after school to prepare for an upcoming city wide reading exam—a common problem in all the schools.

The biggest challenge, however, is motivation. At the start of the year, Barden had nearly 30 students signed up. But "they don’t really understand it," she says, "that they have to practice every week." She allows those who show up sporadically to run, but rewards the five or six consistent students with the uniforms and trips. "A lot of kids have problems with lack of attendance, and difficulty with focus and goals," Gbotoe adds, "One boy’s family didn’t want him to run, for some reason. But, a lot of people know about it now, so..." her sentence trailing off into a nebulous hope.

To assist and encourage the teachers, Stockbridge and Odalen visit each school a minimum of once a week. Beyond the program structure, uniforms, certificates, and details like collecting the endless permission slips, Barden says: "the most important thing is the emotional support that I get...I think the students have had enough of me at the end of the day and sometimes the feeling is mutual; I’ve lost all my patience and empathy for them. Jen has always been there with an open ear. When I’ve been ready to boot a student off the team Jen has helped me to give them another chance and inevitably things have worked out for the best."

For the program to expand further, yet maintain this quality of personal care, requires personnel and funding. To this end, the Foundation has recently hired Cliff Sperber to serve as Executive Director. Sperber’s background is in fund-raising and non-profit management, most recently with Pathways for Youth, a large New York after-school program. Sperber’s goal is "to build something that has legs to it," which requires going beyond individual volunteers, as valuable as they are, and build a partnership between the club, the school systems and a variety of funding agencies: public grants, special events, corporate sponsors and individual donors.

How high are they shooting? New York has 200 middle schools with 200,000 students. Sperber’s goal is to expand to additional schools and community-based programs, hoping to double the number served in the coming year. Beyond that, the Foundation’s mission statement ends with the goal, "to disseminate our program expertise to interested parties across the United States and around the world."

Follow-Up

Hitting Their Stride

In February’s [2002] Verizon Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden we were pleased to see a new event featuring a familiar group: the New York Road Runners Foundation who fielded six all-star relay teams competing in their own 4X1 lap relay.

We caught up with Cliff Sperber, The Foundation’s Executive Director, to see how the program has fared in the post-September 11th environment, and learned that the Foundation, which provides running programs to students in New York City’s PE-deprived elementary and middle schools, continues to grow.

The number of schools involved has doubled, now totaling over 20 schools, with 10 more scheduled to come on board this spring and more than 300-350 students currently participating. In addition, the NYRR Foundation leadership reports having the opportunity to respond to numerous inquiries from as far as Canada and North Carolina on starting similar programs for under served youth.